Date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 23:32:35 -0500 (CDT) From: Chris Dillon <cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Will 8 Intel EtherExpress PRO 10/100's be a problem? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980625222746.12068B-100000@duey.hs.wolves.k12.mo.us>
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I really hope -hackers is the best place for this... i didn't want to crosspost. Within the next few months, i will be needing to set up a router for our internal network, tying together 7 networks, with some room to grow. I plan on buying a rather expensive chassis from Industrial Computer source. It has an interesting partially-passive backplane with a PII-233 or faster and chipset mounted on it (LX or BX chipset, I believe) with everything else on a daughtercard and 9PCI/8ISA slots. Something like the model 7520K9-44H-B4 with redundant power supplies. Basically my questions are: 1) Will there be any problems with using three or more host-to-PCI bridges? 2) Will there be any problems using up to 8 Intel Etherexpress Pro 10/100's? If so, can I use a combination of those and some DEC 21[0,1]4[0,1] cards? 3) If i ever end up using natd for all of this, would there be any problems with it servicing those 7 networks (probably max 100 hosts per network)? I initially thought of just getting a nice ATX rackmount case and a nice ASUS motherboard and using some of those ZNYX 4-port fast-ethernet cards. Several reasons why I like the above idea better is because the support for the Intel cards is apparently better, and replacing bad NICs would be simple and inexpensive. If I DO end up going the ZNYX route, are there any known problems with those 4-port cards? I'd need two of them, of course, and the motherboard would most likely have an Intel card built onto it also. Maybe I'll even eventually throw an ETInc sync serial card in there for my T1 and use our Cisco 2514 elsewhere. Other options I would have are either a 8-port or more Cisco router (ugh, expensive), or a 3COM gigabit layer-3 IP switch (THAT would be nice, but the pricetag is in the 5-digit area). I would MUCH rather use a very nice FreeBSD system for this job. By the way, anyone know of any place cheaper than ICS for the components I need? Even just someplace that sells good ATX rackmount cases and power supplies (Jinco maybe)? -- Chris Dillon - cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us - cdillon@inter-linc.net /* FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet. For Intel x86 and compatibles (SPARC and Alpha under development) (http://www.freebsd.org) */ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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